My Truth

[Meh]

Ami, you asked me a question about the lyrics I posted by Peter Gabriel "In Your Eyes" and how the words were important to me.

I just remembered he wrote another song called "Digging in the Dirt" some of the lyrics go like this:

Dont turn around
This is for real
Digging in the dirt
Stay with me, I need support
Im digging in the dirt
To find the places I got hurt
Open up the places I got hurt

I don't know his stories behind these songs but it's clear that he did his own emotional muck raking like a lot of people on this board are doing.

The "in your eyes" song sounds sort of free and reminds me of the feeling of having a religious experience a "WOW' experience, that is what that song feels like to me. And I guess the longing to be loved is there in the lyrics. The title "In your eyes" I think speaks of mirroring in a way. Or just having someone look and see that I'm not invisible or something like that. "Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart" The waiting the hoping and time goes by and the heart is there and still empty. The endurance.  "And the grand facade so soon will burn" A facade is a lie. Living lies is very tiring. The song sounds very spiritual to me. I did some spiritual experimenting in my life (not drug induced). I think the intense spiritual searching is an attempt to find love and oneness and belonging and meaning in the world and I think it is a result of a curious mind but also it's part of the attempt to heal oneself. "The resolution of all the fruitless searches" "Love, I don't like to see so much pain" "so much wasted and this moment keeps slipping by" The so much wasted part is big for me-I just wait sometimes because I don't know what else to do. "I reach out from the inside". It's a bunch of powerful words.

I'm going to take a break and go for a walk in the woods before it gets dark outside. See y'all later.

[Meh]

Panic Attacks as a child:

(This is me writing out more of my stuff)


I have not had panic attacks recently, that is fine by me. Yet I think it’s interesting that depression and anxiety go together often.

When I had my first panic attack it was when I was a kid, I didn’t know what was happening to me. I was told by my mother that I was being difficult, she seemed to be a little disgusted by me and she said “your fathers going to be mad”.

I think that panic attack happened because I was emotionally overwhelmed. Or maybe it was an abandonment thing. It happened when my mother was sending me to my father in a different state. This was not unusual, the over all moment was typical and uneventful, it seemed liked nothing big was going on yet I had an all out panic attack.

 

[Meh]

This book may give someone insight. It is very very different than almost anything else I have seen out there. It is not the same old ideas regurgitated.

It hasn't fixed me, but it has stories about people who have been healed by unusual means. After reading this book, it leads me to believe that a main problem a person has is finding the right healer.

"Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma: The innate capacity to transform overwhelming experiences" By Peter Levine

Brilliant is not a good enough word to describe this man.
A therapist recommended this book to me, that was nice, but the therapist could not actually do any of the things in the book for me, that is sort of strange.

[teartracks]

Hi Helen,

I'll just comment on a couple of things in your posts that I relate to experientally.  

I discovered that:

1)  My personality type predisposes me to quietness and contemplation-neither makes me bad, wrong, or criminal.

2)  I must create limits on how and to whom I give my time.  If I don't, I become emotionally hungover.  

3)  It's a myth that all quiet, introspective, contemplative people are psychopaths.

4)  It's likely that from infancy, my predisposition to quietness exacerbted the effect my mothers emotional detachment had on me.  I don't know how to explain it, but getting my head around this became an important milestone toward reconciliation and forgiveness.

5) I used to think that small talk was a useless activity.  It's not.  It is important in society, just not important to me.  My lack of appreciation and skill in it doesn't diminish its importance.  OTOH,  it doesn't make me a bad person.

6)  When I started untangling the nasty web of FOO dysfunction/disorder, I truly didn't know what parts of me that I liked and which parts I didn't.  Up to then I'd spent pretty much all my life coping.  Part of healing had to do with embracing (and drawing energy from) the things that I liked about myself.  Identifying and sluffing off my displeasing (to me and others) behaviors is ongoing, just as developing admirable qualities is ongoing.  All of us are works in progress.

Am I preaching to the choir?    []

tt

[Meh]

Tear Tracks:

I read each section of your post and I wrote out a long response to it but decided not to post it all, instead I will simplify and say thank you for sharing your own thoughts, yes what you posted does make sense to me and I concur with much of it. The one thing that I differ on is that I have doubts that my aloneness is by choice/predisposition, I do need time to myself, but I truly struggle with having strong long standing relationships. I very much wish I had more "good" people in my life. I know there is a theory about shyness being genetically related but that gets into a nature/nurture thing that I can't answer for myself. I've heard people say that sometimes there is a "night and day" transformation that a person can go through so.....who knows? 

Thanks again,  It sounds like you have done some work around self acceptance.

I've had times when I thought I conquered self love, but here I am trying to find a quality about myself that I'm grateful for and right now I'm not grateful for me. I never thought I would be this way again, thought I was past it. As you say teartracks, it is an ongoing process.........

[Gabben]

Narcissistic people can gain popularity and no one would dare say that there is any thing about the N person that is less then perfect. In fact I think N people get sort of worshipped sometimes. Admiration. That is one of the things that makes it hard to fully realize their abuse. There can be other people around who buy into the N's version of reality. They are living a lie.

This was affirming for me to read, it helped affirm a reality that has plagued me for a long time with some particular N.
It is very painful to be the victim of N abuse, especially when no one sees it.

I think that the pain of being abused by an N, who's lack of empathy was so hurtful, has done me more good than harm, in the end that is. (I've said this many times). Their hurt to me has helped me to heal the hurt from my own NM. It occurred to me that the present N abuse, the living a lie in their care, was what it was like growing up with child neglect, I brought the lies...I believed the lies that the reality of lack of empathy for my needs was acceptable. The N's fool you into thinking that they care when in fact they are split off from their emotions and unable to really care...it resembles early childhood neglect, the silence of the hidden pain of being wounded with NO voice to express the pain.

I'm still not expressing this well...In other words, as you said, I bought my NM's version of reality that my emotional needs were insignificant.

[Ami]

Dear Helen
 I am gonna get that book. I believe in unusual ways in which healing comes. I have had many!                  XXXOOO AMi

[Izzy_*now*]

Welcome Helen,

I wanted to reply to your first post because this was me, but I was voiceless.

I remember being sad though, I also remember that at some point I must have stopped socializing normally with other kids. This wasn't always so, I can't confidently  say that it is due to voicelessness. I'm not sure what happened, I wasn't diagnosed with anything ever. It seems that I was aftraid of the other kids or I just couldn't hold my own ground, I wasn't boisterous. I couldn't follow their play interactions. I spent a lot of time by myself, it felt normal to me to be by myself. I was good at occupying myself. I probably rarely felt part of a group, I thought that was normal. I always did OK in school academically. I can't really diagnose myself here. It's an observation I was making. Psychologists say play is really important to development. Maybe I was just a sensitive child/soft/overwhelmed? Even slow? I don't know.

and after all these years I am still by myself, with some crazy stories in between. I believe I am a hypersensitive person and when comparing some things with the only people who would, dwindled down to one out of 4 siblings. We find we remember the same incidents, but we perceived them differently. What might have run off her back, would freeze me in my tracks, so to speak, and I have spent a lifetime trying to understand this. I am now 70 and she is 68. This is the first, for me, to discuss our upbringing with a sibling....the people we know longest in our lifetime.

As far as assertiveness goes, I had none, but she did. I now stand up for myself in a polite, not aggressive way and what has passed has passed, and the past is the past, examined closely by me, but I deem it too late for extensive new relationships, or for mending some old ones with those who cannot understand, or will not even try.

For the most part, IMO, who we become depends on how we were raised.

Keep on
Izzy

[sKePTiKal]

OH Helen... you write and express yourself beautifully! Eloquently!

I am enjoying reading about you even though some of topics aren't so pleasant. I'll bet you are STILL that beautiful girl, too.
Can't wait for your next "installment"...

I was going to offer you a one-word piece of advice... something to look up - boundaries. But it appears that you are defining boundaries - when, where and how you interact with your brother, for instance. Going "no contact" with your mom. So, instead, I will suggest inner child work. If that beautiful girl disappeared... it is possible to find out where she is hiding, hear her story, and help her return to that full life. Can you remember if she was always shy and quiet? Or was that a response to something? What did she like to do? What do you feel, when you spend time looking at her?

Sounds like you've been reading Mindfulness Buddhist books. The names are familiar to me, though it's been a long time since I read them. Because my beliefs are a mish-mosh of things, I usually use Buddhist as my response for spiritual inquiries into my beliefs. Short-hand.

You describe yourself as quiet - but I'm getting a picture not of someone fearful to say anything, but rather a very, very strong quiet; sustaining like time-worn rocks and ancient trees... like a vein of granite buried in the earth or the tallest oak in the forest. I like to sit with this type of quiet and listen for the stories and secrets they can tell. As long as it takes, for me to learn to hear the small whispers and to understand the language of rocks; the simple truth.

Welcome.

[teartracks]

Hi Helen,


The one thing that I differ on is that I have doubts that my aloneness is by choice/predisposition, I do need time to myself, but I truly struggle with having strong long standing relationships.

I understand.  We're not created in a 'one size fits all' fashion.   The process of healing can be tedious.  It sounds like you're well on your way.  The book, Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't, helped me a lot.

tt

   

[Meh]

Hello, TearTracks,

The "Safe People" book that you described sounds encouraging, I haven't heard of it before, I will have to go look for it!!
I probably really need to read that one.

Thanks!!!!

[Meh]

Hi Phoenix and Izzy thanks for your comments!

[Meh]

Non-Violent Communication

I feel tenderness for the struggles shared by many people posting on this board and a need to alleviate the pain they are experiencing.
The thought came to me that I can share a tool that was meaningful to me. I'm not sure that it helped my pain, actually sometimes it just uncovers more pain. But I think that I have found something solid in the NVC process and it helps me get real with myself. So maybe it can help someone out there. 

Some of you may have already been exposed to the Non-Violent Communication Process.

So First of all I have to say that I have tried NVC with my Nar-mother, and other relatives, it has at times prevented relationships from getting worse, but it did not fix or improve the relationships. If you do decide to use NVC I would caution against using it with
Nar- people. You can try if you like. I tried using it with a Nar-person at work and it totally inflamed that person, the person reverted back to an unrestrained five year old brat. Come to think of it, I hadn't even been talking to her, I was just stating something totally neutral to the group that was about work and was not a personal issue. The fact that I exclaimed my enthusiasm for something pissed the co-worker off. I don't understand how these Nar-people become popular, they are just so lame....

So, The reason why I'm suggesting the NVC out here is because I think it may be a tool of sorts that a person can use to have a relationship with themselves. A person can use the NVC process with their OWN THOUGHTS!

NVC hasn't fixed all my struggles in life but it has helped me get clear and simple and truthful.

The NVC process is this: Identify Feeling, The feeling points to the Need, Identify Need, and then one can even request that the need be met by someone

I find that just Identifying the Feeling and The Need internally can be useful for me (thats' a very safe level), this can be enough of a challenge at times.

Requesting to get the need met, now that is a struggle for me..I usually don't go this far, out of fear that I won't get the need met and embarrassment for having asked in the first place.

From reading about NVC I learned that culturally it is brain-washed into all of society to deny their own feelings and needs.
With children of Narcissistic Parents the struggle is greater because they didn't get practice at experiencing their own feelings and needs - they got warped by the Nar-Person. And the Nar Person was not going to give.

I personally don't buy into every part of the NVC Philosophy, it's a too idealistic, instead I just like the process. You can decide for yourself what makes sense to you..I really struggled with the NVC Philosophy at first, because it includes the premise that (People have a need for other's wellbeing), and NVC practitioners state this like an absolute fact. I believed this at first but I had to go through that hard reality check, that told me not only do some people not "have the need for another person's wellbeing" but they "have the need for another person's suffering". The idea that "a person has a need for another persons suffering" goes against NVC, but it is true in my mind and I have a need for getting down to reality to keep myself safe from harmful people and to keep my mind straight.

You are welcome to explore and come to your own conclusions!

Anyways, there is A LOT of good stuff in the NVC process. There are even practice groups in some cities.
I recommend checking out the websites and if it looks interesting then get some used books of amazon.com.
I think I got about 4-5 books for about $10.00.

http://www.cnvc.org/
http://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/

I've got a few more things to say about this... of course... will do that later..

Off subject: I had this dream last night that someone washed my dishes for me! I don't have a dishwasher-machine so I was delighted. What a funny dream. I guess my subconscious doesn't approve of my dirty dishes in the sink. Ha Ha

[Meh]

"A General Theory of Love"

I did not read this book, tried but I could not stand the writing. The book does have an interesting piece of the problem. The limbic system. Babie's limbic systems harmonize with their mama's limbic systems.

I think that what happens is we can go round and round in our thoughts but there is body memory and limbic system memory.

What if scientists have the complete answer to our emotional traumas and are just hiding it. Or not so much hiding it but not kind enough to put it out there into the world in a useful format. I know this sounds paranoid but I have my suspicions that with the right knowledge we could be healed and that the right knowledge is probably out there somewhere.

The scientists who wrote the book "A general theory of love" brag about their perfect families and marriages. Poooh!
Sorry, I complain to much.

God..I wish I could find a good therapist once and for all....

[Ami]

Dear Helen
 I think you dream meant that you are not alone, anymore. You have a group to "help " you through life (the Board?). It hit me when I read  your dream was that it meant that you have help in life now. You are not alone to wash your dirty dishes. What would dirty dishes mean---old,hurtful thought  patterns  that can be stuck like dirt on dishes.
Tell me what you think, Helen.           XXOO      Ami